Tenebroum

Chapter 186: Shattered - End Book 4

Worms were crawling all the way up to the edge of the boundary circle now. They were pouring out of the sarcophagus like there was some sort of portal in there. They were flooding the place, but except for the few that had sprung from the corpse that Tenebroum had been wearing only a moment ago, there was none outside the binding rings.

That was good, but there should have been none at all outside the binding rings. The spirits were separated from the rest of the world; at least, they should have been.

The Lich woke up every head in its library at once to demand answers but knew that such answers would take time, even if they came at all. While it did so, it was torn between fleeing the room and sealing the stone door and between watching what might happen next. If it stayed, then whatever foul magic it was that connected it to the Worm might get stronger, but if it fled, then it wouldn’t be able to see or stop what happened next.

The very idea of fleeing in its own place of power was preposterous, but that’s exactly what was about to happen. It would have, too, if it had not seen the worms from its corpse inching their way across the floor toward the cage of rats.

Tenebroum silently ordered the closest drudge to walk over and stomp every last worm until there was nothing left. It might not be able to do anything about the overflowing sarcophagus yet, but fire-wielding forgewights were on their way. They didn’t have a tenth of the strength of Krulm’venor, but they were more than enough to sterilize this room.

As the zombie crushed all the worms until they were nothing but goo with thick booted feet, the Worm cried out. “You don’t need to do thisss… you can join usss…”

“I do not have partners or allies, and I do not join pantheons,” the Lich barked. “And I only use servants that—”

“Not a pantheon…” the worms whispered. “No… A creature like you… we desire your power…”

The Lich should have roared in outrage. It wanted to, but instead, it could only stare in mute horror as the drudge that had crushed the worms began to bulge and bloat. Tennebroum ordered it to move back to the far end of the room, but it didn’t reach it before it exploded in a shower of flat and roundworms of all shapes and colors.

The door to the room slid shut behind its ephemeral form with the loud sound of stone grating against stone. Such a burial wouldn’t stop the Lich from doing as it wanted, but it would keep whatever was happening here from spreading.

Realistically, it should draw the life force out of these cursed things and devour their spirits whole. It had considered that with Groshin many times, but now it was glad that it had not. There was no telling what terrible effect that might have had.

The worms were everywhere now. They were in all three circles and on several of the drudges. They were on the walls and the ceilings. Tennebroum was more than a little disturbed. Fortunately, that’s when the forgewights arrived.

The dwarven ghosts were usually used to hammer armor into shape and make metal skeletons for one of a hundred different projects. For that, they wore iron gauntlets bound to their souls so they could use tools and interact with objects. Today, they had a different task: extermination.

“You want my power?” Tennebroum asked. “Then burn with it.”

As the Lich finished speaking, fire flooded the room. In fact, the light of it was uncomfortably bright enough that it moved to hide in the shadow of the sarcophagus lid that had been propped against the near wall. It didn’t need to see everything to know what was happening, though. It could hear it. It could hear the shrieks of the rats and the howl of the wolf as much as it could hear the crisping of the worms as the world filled with fire.

According to the legends, that was how Siddrim purged them, wasn’t it? Tenebroum thought to himself.

The fire went on for almost a minute before the oxygen was completely depleted, and the forgewights fled as slender blue flames before they were extinguished completely. This let the Lich spread out completely in the darkness to see what it had wrought.

The results were not what it had hoped. It had expected to find only charred bodies that had gone still. The Queen of Thrones herself had mentioned that this wolf could die if enough damage had been done to it, but somehow, despite its wounds, it was still snarling even as it was covered in burns. Some of the mice were moving, too, and the Worm’s sarcophagus was beginning to churn again.

“Fire… heat… it isss not enough…” the Worm whispered again. “Not without the light that comesss with it.”

The Lich’s blood froze at those words. Light was the one thing it could not wield against these things. It had minions that could use any of the four elements, shadows, acid, and any number of other strange weapons. There was no light, though. Instantly, its mind started to race through the antielement options it might have. There was no strangulite in its lair, but for everything else—

Tenebroum’s train of thought was derailed when it Heard the wolf growl more loudly and then pad forward, one shaky step at a time. The beast shouldn’t have been able to move forward past the rings that bound it, but it only took the quickest glance at the rings to see what had happened.

The marks that had been painted on the floor had been made in a dark pigment that wouldn’t be harmed by the flames, but the worms that had landed on them during the gorey explosion had been burned to a crisp until they carburized them. One flawed ring could ruin such a working or even make it dangerous, as the mages of Abenend had found out the hard way. In this case, it had set the Wolf free. No, it realized, to its’ horror, it had set them all free.

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“There is no choiccce,” the Worm whispered as the wolf ripped open the cage and began to devour the rats, becoming one with them. “Malzzekeen will flourisssh and devour everything until the light ssstopsss usss. Even you…”

The Lich had its remaining drudges charge the thing, but it knew they stood no chance. Even before it had finished ripping them to pieces, its tail was changing into that of a rat, and its second head was growing. This was the worst-case scenario in its mind, and even as it retreated through the door made of eight inches of solid stone, drudges were pushing a heavy wooden beam across it to make it nearly impossible to open while reinforcements headed this way.

The Lich wasn’t sure what it would do if they breached the door. It had many projects that were halfway through construction, but other than its honor guard, it had very few warriors in its own inner sanctum these days. They simply were not needed. There were its own constructs, of course. It would likely have to animate one of the more powerful models and—

“Ahhhh… I see at last,” a new voice whispered the way that the Worm had. It was a chorus too, like the rats had been before now, but it was subtler and dripping with malice. New or not, though, there was only one person it could be. Malzekeen.

“We had been wondering what the connection was between an immortal being like the Worm and a paltry specter like you, and now we see it at last,” Malzekeen purred. “It’s the gold, isn’t it. You robbed our tomb and cut your throat; isn’t that ironic…”

Even as warriors flooded down the corridor to stand ready against whatever was about to happen, The Lich suddenly realized what it was that the caged god was talking about. “It’s my gold,” the Lich roared as it fled back to the heart of darkness: its throne room and the phylactery it contained.

Every resource that it had in the place was in motion now. Drudges were fetching untested alchemical compounds, and half-finished warriors were springing to life and shambling toward the lonely hallway where all hell was breaking loose. Everything was being mobilized.

“To think if you’d left that gold where it belonged, then you would…” the distant echoing voice paused. “Oh, but you couldn’t… could you… Tenebroum…”

To hear its own name from the lips of another was enough to stop the Lich in its tracks for a moment. Such a thing was impossible. It was unthinkable. It was the one thing that was not written in the Skoeticnomikos. It was the one fact that the library did not know. It was forbidden. The only place it even existed was in the great mandala that surrounded its territory, which let it dictate the very rules of the world here.

Even in that place, though, had been specifically carved by a handful of drudges under its watchful eye, and they were obliterated afterward. There was simply no way that Malzekeen could know unless…

Suddenly, it looked down at that slender thread that seemed to unravel off of it and back toward that monster. It was reading its mind through this cursed link.

“I am,” it purred. “That and so much more. You are but a paltry ghost, but you’ve been up to so much. And you have such strength, too. We cannot wait to devour it.”

Tenebroum paused, almost to its throne room, and assessed itself. It did not feel weak, but not that it was focusing on it; it could detect a notable drain.

In the distance, something boomed. The beast was trying to get free.

With all the souls like this, it had gathered, it could probably endure this a long time, but that wasn’t good enough. It needed to sever this strange connection once and for all. There was only one way to do that, though, and the thought was terrifying.

The connection to the Lich was through the gold in its phylactry. What it didn’t know. What it could never have known was that that gold had already touched something else. That was what those adventurers found, and that was what Cutter and Riley had stolen from them. That was the core of everything.

Suddenly, certain questions that Tenebroum had never asked before were answered. Why did it have powers over disease in those early days? Why did it slip so easily into the swamp and its many predators? More than anything, why did it all feel so right?

The Lich was horrified by those realizations and more as it sped to its throneroom. There was a terrible bang again. This time, it was accompanied by the sound of cracking stone. Even eight inches of limestone wasn’t enough to keep that thing at bay.

“Nothing can stop me,” Malzekeen whispered in his mind. “I’m coming for you, Tenebroum, and there’s nothing you can do about it…”

It briefly tried to reverse the link and pry into the mind of this foreign entity, but it was a terrible idea, and it only sped up the power that was being sapped from it. The Lich stopped and ignored it. It had already made up its mind.

It issued a command that it never thought it would have to make, and suddenly, its lizardman honor guard that had stood still for so long sprang to life. They hesitated only briefly as Malzekeen tried to stop it, but whatever hold it had over Tennebroum was tenuous, and it only barely extended to the Lich’s minions.

“You think this will stop me?” Malzekeen roared in Tenebroum’s mind like the beast he was. “I am primeval. I am unstoppable. You cannot hope to defeat me!”

As the beast blustered and shattered the stone doorway that held it back, the Lich’s eight lizardman warriors brought their halberds down hard on the phylactery, hopelessly mangling it. Albrect had stood there silently for such a long time, and now, with no warning at all, he was being destroyed. The warriors delivered blow after terrible blow until the golden shell was in pieces, and dust was leaking from the mummified corpse.

And just like that, the ghostly link vanished, along with a good chunk of what made the Lich who it was. For a long time, it had been a maelstrom. It had been lightning in a bottle, but now there was no bottle, and it began to unravel immediately. Now, its soul spun out of control, hemorrhaging spirits large and small. With each one, a bit of expertise or knowledge vanished, and Tenebroum slowly but surely unraveled into nothing.

It was coming undone. It was no longer a Lich. It was merely one specter among many, desperately flying through the dark as its world ended. It wasn’t alone; there were tens of thousands of spirits flying to pieces in all directions, and it had no idea what would be left when every last spark and shard that made it who it was was gone. The last thing that Tenebroum saw before it flew off to hide in the darkest corner of its lair was that awful chimera tearing its way through the guards it faced.

It had become exactly like the texts had said it would. It was a deranged two-headed predator, as large as a man, with the head of a wolf and a rat, ringed all around in a terrible mane of worms, and any minute now, that thing would be hunting it.

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